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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25453177">the definition of warn</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria'>Siria</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Old Guard (Movie 2020)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>F/F</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-07-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-07-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 07:43:00</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,235</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25453177</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Siria/pseuds/Siria</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>They were in southern Spain when the death reached them. Or not them, exactly: they could be killed by sword or by arrow, but they didn't sicken and die the way ordinary people did.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Andy | Andromache of Scythia/Quynh | Noriko</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>168</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>the definition of warn</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Thanks to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/sheafrotherdon">sheafrotherdon</a> for betaing.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>They were in southern Spain when the death reached them. Or not them, exactly: they could be killed by sword or by arrow, but they didn't sicken and die the way ordinary people did. Whatever miasmas were being carried slowly around the world on the trade winds, Andromache and Quỳnh had nothing to fear from them.</p><p>Nothing to fear, perhaps, except that this was the time that the physicians' direst warnings were correct. That more people would die, until whole towns fell silent and the fields went fallow in the countryside. That ever more people would die, until the only other people left, somewhere else around the coast of the Central Sea, were Yusuf and his Nicolò. That people would die, and the world would end, and Andromache and Quỳnh would be left unaging amid its ruins.</p><p>"You worry too much," Quỳnh said. They were sitting on the rooftop of a house they were renting not far from the port, breakfast spread out on a cloth between them. Normally having easy sight lines from a height would have made Andromache more comfortable, but not now. Now it just reminded her of how much quieter the town was than it should have been. Servants and porters should have been shuffling their way through the narrow streets below to the market to get the best of the fresh catch. The devout should have been greeting the early morning light with prayer, and yawning mothers should have been stirring slumbering hearths back to life.</p><p>Instead, Andromache could hear the slow, muffled tolling of a church bell and, further away again, someone wailing in grief.</p><p>"I didn't say anything," Andromache said.</p><p>"You didn't have to," Quỳnh said, popping a piece of bread in her mouth. "You have that look on your face. Same as in Antioch."</p><p>"This isn't the same as Antioch," Andromache pointed out.</p><p>No one had died like this when they were last in Antioch. Deaths from fevers and chills, of course. Andromache had seen so many of them over the centuries. But it had been a long time, even as Andromache reckoned the passage of years, since she had seen people die like they were doing now: with sudden, stinking swellings in the armpit or groin and an agonised death rattle. It unsettled her.</p><p>"You know what I mean," Quỳnh said.</p><p>Breakfast didn't appeal to her, Andromache decided. She went over to her bedroll and retrieved her labrys and an old rag. It wasn't necessary to oil the axehead just then, but the activity always soothed her. After all, the labrys was the only thing she had left to her of her birth people, now that even they were gone and there was no one left to whom she could recite the great epics she'd learned at her mother's knee.</p><p>"Ah," Quỳnh said, a hint of knowing laughter in her voice, "so you do indeed know what I mean but refuse to admit it. This is <em>very</em> like Antioch."</p><p>Andromache didn't know why the ones the Greeks called the Moirai had let the thread of her life spool out for so long, or if there truly was some fixed fate out there for each person, or when a real and final end would come for her. She did, however, know that she had wandered far and wide across the earth, and had never met another person who could exasperate her so easily and yet make her smile so readily as Quỳnh did.</p><p>Andromache sat down cross-legged and set to work on the labrys. "You listened to me in Antioch, though. And you know this is different. Has been for a while, now." The parents who now wailed over their dead children had themselves been young during the long years when it seemed like the sun had hardly ever risen and the rain-swollen rivers burst their banks, when the crops wouldn't grow and the grapes rotted on the vine and the cattle died of a shitting pestilence so virulent not even their hides could be used. And now this. It had been a long time since Andromache had willingly sought out auguries or prophets, but she couldn't quite make herself shake a belief in signs.</p><p>"It's a tragedy," Quỳnh said, "but dear heart, what can we do? Neither you nor I are well-suited to be nurses in the sick room, nor can we make green things grow in a desert. And we have seen tragedies before, but the sun still rises each morning, and we are still here, and I get to walk freely through the world with you at my side. If this pestilence is worse than the others—"</p><p>In her reflection in the now-gleaming axehead, Andromache could see her mouth tighten. She had been down to the main pier at sunrise. It was common for vessels not to come into port if they feared that pestilence gripped a city. But this morning there had been no ships on the horizon at all.</p><p>"—well, we have one another. What more do we need?"</p><p>Andromache closed her eyes for a moment and took a deep breath. There was truth to what Quỳnh said. Together, they had seen the passing of thousands of seasons and the rise and fall of empires. If things were never quite so uncomplicated as Quỳnh's sunniest predictions, nor were they ever so terrible as Andromache's worst fears.</p><p>"<em>Mình-em</em>." Andromache opened her eyes again to find that Quỳnh had moved to kneel next to her. When Quỳnh smiled at her like that, when she leaned in to kiss her sweet and slow as honey, it was difficult to remember that Andromache had ever once been alone, or that she could ever be so again. "You worry too much. Trust me."</p><p>And Andromache did, and Andromache had.</p><p> </p>
<hr/><p> </p><p>Two days later, the whole quarter had burned down. They never knew what had sparked it—a candle knocked over late at night, a fire deliberately set to rid the town of whatever was emitting the miasmas that caused the pestilence, or something else. Andromache and Quỳnh didn't wait to find out, slinging their belongings over their back and stealing north and east along the coast before dawn broke. Better for the townspeople to think that the two quiet foreign women were one of the many who had perished in the fire than for them to wonder how Andromache and Quỳnh had escaped the flames.</p><p>When Andy next visited the town, it was 1983 and she could no longer tell where the little house they'd rented had once stood. She'd walked so many streets since then, after all, and the world had changed so much. Perhaps it had been on the corner of this lane, or that alleyway? Maybe that was the little square where they had stood to hear a particularly animated wandering preacher and Quỳnh's hand had brushed against hers, a deliberate and public tease?</p><p>Joe had noticed her hesitation. "Are you okay, boss?"</p><p>Quỳnh had always been the one to tell Andromache to have a little more optimism, a little more trust in tomorrow. Andy had never thought to tell Quỳnh not to put her faith in her. The sudden surge of bile in the back of her throat bit like salt water.</p><p>"Fine," Andy said, and kept going. After all, no matter what she did, the sun would still come up in the morning.</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>The Second Plague Pandemic (also known as the Black Death) likely began in the 13th century, reached western Europe by the late 1340s, and caused the deaths of a substantial proportion of the population of the world as Andy and Quỳnh then knew it. Successor outbreaks continued in Europe into the early 18th century. The early 14th century in Europe was also a period of climactic change, resulting in the Great Famine of 1315-22, much disastrous flooding, and the spread of a very awful livestock disease called rinderpest. Not a fun century to be around.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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